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Total Cost of Ownership Seminar Webcast on November 6

30 Oct 2008

What's the TCO of XO laptops?

It is with great honor that invite OLPC News readers to the live webcast of a discussion around Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) that I've helped organize in direct response to your vibrant feedback on this site.

How much does it really cost to introduce and sustain computers in schools?
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): A Study of Models of Affordable Computing for Schools in Developing Countries.
11am - 12:30pm (Washington DC time)
6 November 2008Live Webcast

You may remember Jon from the very first OLPC TCO conversation two years ago. Now is your chance to see him, me, and a whole assortment of thought leaders debate the real costs of deploying computers in schools in the Live Webcast.

This seminar webcast will also be recorded for review at your convenience.

"The Foreign Ministry is migrating all of its 11.000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other Open source applications. According to Schuster, this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. "The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we spend only one thousand euro per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average spend more than 3000 euro per desktop per year.""

This is obviously far removed from the OLPC (although their might be an embasy near you :-).

It's relevant to note that the 1:1 budgeting tool I'm helping Roxana Bassi with is coming at the TCO from a different angle. The Vital Wave paper compares hardware and software platform choices, whereas we presume a 1:1 model and suggest the often-ignored costs to help create a realistic cost total for the life of a project.

"Deployment Costs: John Watlington, Richard, and Reuben worked on a manual for calculating actual XO installation costs under various conditions. Richard, for example, produced a rough BOM and associated costs for 1 and 2kW off-grid solar and wind power systems.

What is the real cost of giving a laptop to a school that lacks power? Using solar power alone and providing a single charge to each laptop each day (3-4 hours of conventional use; much longer in ebook mode), the additional cost is around $200 per laptop for a mid-sized school (100 students).

The manual is still being refined, but already it reinforces the importance of laptop power consumption in making it feasible to bring laptops to these most challenging, yet common off-grid schools."

@Wayan:
"What is the real cost of giving a laptop to a school that lacks power? Using solar power alone and providing a single charge to each laptop each day (3-4 hours of conventional use; much longer in ebook mode), the additional cost is around $200 per laptop for a mid-sized school (100 students)."

No doubt solar is the future. But are these $200 per XO-lifetime (6 years?)? That is, how long do these solar panels last? I can see a lot of wear on the connectors of these panels.

If it is per 6 years, it will add $37/year to the TCO. If power-over-lines *is* available, this solar option will not be very popular.

Do they require a spare battery? So one battery is charged while the other is in use?